At the beginning of the year, big businesses reached out to Haiti in the form of food, money and aid when the country was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake.

Domestically, within the U.S., river floods overwhelmed the southern region of the U.S., killing scores of people, destroying homes and triggering evacuations, and recalling memories of Hurricane Katrina. The most severe damage was in areas outside Nashville and across the middle and western parts of Tennessee. In San Bruno, south of San Francisco, a PG&E (PCG) pipeline exploded, killing at least four people. A series of analyst downgrades for the company promptly ensued.

As the world moved closer to the New Year, big snowstorms forced several global airports to shut down, resulting in the cancellation of thousands of flights. Still, this inconvenience paled in comparison to the mass paralysis of airports around the world in spring, as massive clouds of vision-obscuring ash erupted from a volcano in Iceland.

In light of all this, as we begin the new year, TheStreet compiles an album of disastrous events that moved the world in 2010. Click on for the year in disasters, in pictures....